Jury to convene in campaign letter case

WEST CHESTER – The Common Pleas Court jury hearing the case of an East Bradford couple accused of sending a fraudulent campaign letter in a district justice race is scheduled to begin deliberating Thursday morning, after hearing one of the defendants deny having anything to do with the letter.

Donald Skomsky took the stand Wednesday to say that he and his wife had taken no part in the negative letter that appeared in voters’ mailboxes just before the primary election for magisterial district judge in May 2011. Any evidence to the contrary, he said, came from a business mailing the two had prepared for his engineering company.

The jury of 10 men and two women were asked to report to court at 8 a.m. Thursday to hear legal instructions from Judge William P. Mahon and then begin their deliberations.

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The campaign letter was sent to voters in the Downingtown district court jurisdiction making critical comments about incumbent Rita Arnold, who eventually won re-election to another term.

Skomsky, 59, and his wife, Valerie Palfy, 48, are charged with two counts of forgery and conspiracy. Skomsky, as the candidate in the race, is also charged with unsworn falsification, and violations of the state’s campaign laws. The pair have remained free on bail pending the trial; Palfy did not appear during the three days of the trial because of a reported illness.

The campaign letter at issue described ethical lapses by Arnold, the incumbent district magisterial judge who Skomsky was running against on both political tickets in the 2011 primary election. It suggested in harsh terms that she had misused her post in dealing with criminal charges levied against one of her son’s, Forrest Solomon.

When the letter was delivered to voters in the district days before the primary, leaders of the two parties said they received complaints that it was unfair to Arnold and asked to know who at the headquarters had authorized it. The letter was sent in envelopes with the return address of “CC Dems for Justice” and “Chester County Republicans for Justice,” with the return street address of the two parties’ headquarters in West Chester.

Both groups were fictitious, and the letter, although it suggested Skomsky should be nominated, was unsigned. Party leaders testified during the proceedings before Judge William P. Mahon they had not authorized the mailing, although it appeared to come from their headquarters.

Police tied the couple to the letter when Chester County Detective Sgt. Michael interviewed a clerk at a Staples store in the Gateway Shopping Center in Valley Forge, who told him that she had assisted Palfy and Skomsky in making thousands of copies of a three-page, black and white, letter on May 9.

The woman, Melissa Davis, said that she glanced at the letter and saw Arnold’s name at the top of one page with the headline “Who is Rita Arnold?” Her mother, coincidentally, worked as Arnold’s office manager. Davis testified that when she asked Palfy whether she knew Arnold, Palfy became angry and accused her of reading the letter. There were problems with the copying, however, and Palfy left the store.

The next day, according to another prosecution witness, Palfy arrived at a Staples store in Villanova, again to make copies of a three-page, single-spaced letter. The clerk who helped her recalled seeing “dense” text much like the letter that voters received, and testified that Palfy did not want any copies of the letter left behind.

But taking the stand in his own defense, Skomsky – a mechanical engineer and inventor with several patents to his name, and owner of a firm called Integrity Engineering – told the jury that he had known nothing of the campaign letter until a copy arrived at his home in East Bradford.

Skomsky told the jury he had gotten involved in the campaign for magisterial district judge in the Downingtown district at the behest of several friends and acquaintances who said he would bring a “fresh face” to the job. He had some early difficulties learning the ropes of a political campaign because he had never been involved with one before, he said.

The defendant denied writing the letter about Arnold, copying it, or sending it to the Democratic and Republican voters in the Downingtown area. “I had absolutely no involvement with it whatsoever,” he said in response to a question from the couple’s attorney, Joseph Silvestro of Media.

He said that he and Palfy had gone to the Staples in Valley Forge May 9 so that he could buy office supplies and his so that his wife could make photocopies of a marketing letter she was sending to potential clients of their company.

The only campaign literature he distributed on his behalf, he said, was confined to a post card touting his credentials and a tri-fold flyer.

On cross-examination, however, Skomsky told Assistant District Attorney Max O’Keefe, who prosecuted the case, that he had never sent the merchandising letter he said Palfy had copied that day, and that he hadn’t reviewed it before or afterward.

“We never got the chance to do anything with them” because Palfy became ill, Skomsky said.

Combative and defensive on cross-examination, Skomsky acknowledged that he and his wife had earlier made copies of the criminal court records of Solomon in April, including information that was specifically cited in the letter accusing Arnold of having acted improperly in cases dealing with Solomon.

“We were concerned for our welfare,” he explained as the reason they had made copies of Solomon’s files, although he cited no specifics. “We were told there might be a threat to us from this individual.” He denied knowing, however, that Solomon was related to Arnold until later in the month.

In his closing argument, O’Keefe asked the jury to use their common sense when putting together the pieces of the case.

“There is no grandiose conspiracy” to charge the couple with crimes they did not commit, he said. “The only conspiracy is between the defendants to defraud the (political) parties and deceive the voters of Chester County.”

Holding up a copy of the letter, O’Keefe said there should not no doubt that this was what Palfy had photocopied at the Staples. “The defense cannot explain where this letter came from,” he said. “To believe they had never seen it is ridiculous.”

Silvestro, in his closing argument, said that the prosecution, however, had not proven that the letter was a forgery, since it did not contain anything other than the return address of the two committees. There was no letterhead, no logos, and no signature from any party official.

“How can you say my guy tried to fool anybody?” Silvestro said. Skomsky, he said, “did nothing as far as he is concerned except to try to do something for his community.”